My new quads

Sophia has no idea what's in store for her!

Okay, "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan has gotten into my head.

The first thing he does when arriving at the home of a problem dog is take the dog for a run while on roller blades. He lets the dog tire itself out, arrives back at the house with a whole new dog, hands them the leash and says, "Ok, there's nothing wrong with the dog. Let's work on you."

I am lucky - Sophia doesn't have any behavioral problems. She is a perfect dog - one of the reasons why I wanted to adopt an adult dog: I could see how she turned out and she won't be chewing on everything, driving me crazy.

But even though she does not exhibit any weird behavior, she still needs exercise - more than I am giving her. This winter has been hard. She hates the rain and we finally got to the point that during all those weeks of rain if it was raining during walk time, we didn't go. (That's that window between 3 PM when I got home and 4:30 PM when it got dark - not much of a window). Now that it's not getting dark until closer to 6 PM (yea!!) we've run into another problem - 3 days a week I have an afternoon consulting gig after my part-time job at Eagle. This is fabulous news for my business Pens & Pixels! I am working at Common Ground, a non-profit housing developer located in Pioneer Square, assisting them as an Administrative Consultant. It's a convenient location, frankly I have the time, and really could also use the money.

But what that means is that now Sophia is not getting walked every day at all (a far cry from the twice a day walks we took our first 6 months together). Sophia and I went to the beach last week - the first sunny afternoon we had in almost two months. I took her out onto the sand and she crouched down and made as if she was going to run. I ran a little bit with her, but hard to do in loose sand, and honestly I can't go very far, aerobically or physically (heel pain).

Enter - ROLLER SKATES.

I always wanted roller skates as a kid. REAL skates - not those toe skates that came apart in the middle if the nut wasn't screwed down tight enough. Between the Dog Whisperer and reliving my girlhood for the 2nd time (really the first time, but that's for another post), and having my own bank account, I now own a pair of real boot roller skates.

Since the 90s invention of inline skates, or roller blades, roller skates seemed old school. Well, now they have a fancy new name (QUADS) and roller derby was reborn in Seattle in 2004 with the Rat City Roller Girls and their 4 derby teams (see www.ratcityrollergirls.com) Looks like they are too elitist to take me up on my offer to pay someone to teach me to stay vertical on my new skates, but I guess I can't say that I blame them.

So my plan is to get to the point where I am safe and confident on my new quads then take Sophia for a real run. And often. We have great skating/bike paths here in Seattle, and it's great exercise for both of us. Maybe I will finally find out just how much stamina this little girl has. Because for a "small" dog, she seems to have "big" dog energy!

Wish us luck!

More info
Cesar Millan's Dog Psychology Center in Los Angeles
http://www.dogpsychologycenter.com/

Dog Whisperer on National Geographic Channel
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/dogwhisperer/